


Bad days

by sweetlikesugar



Series: Pack Writing [4]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Not Beta Read, Prokopenko is a nice supportive friend, that's a new one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 17:36:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11628504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetlikesugar/pseuds/sweetlikesugar
Summary: Prokopenko has seen all shades of bad days. When you know someone since the age of ten, there is nothing you haven't seen. And Prokopenko has, indeed, seen it all.





	Bad days

**Author's Note:**

> i'm so bored you guys, i wrote Kavinsky having a bad episode where Prokopenko is actually a decent human being

Kavinsky had his good days and Kavinsky had his bad days. The variety of bad in bad days was, to say lightly, overwhelming. There were bad days with night terrors. There were bad days in general. They were bad days, manifested with extensive dreaming. There were bad days, and there were _bad_ days.

 

Prokopenko has seen all shades of bad days. When you know someone since the age of ten, there is nothing you haven't seen. And Prokopenko has, indeed, seen it all.

 

There were no tells of bad days. No obvious triggers. Essentialy, there was nothing to indicate whether a day has started as a bad day, or a good day turned to a bad one. Nothing to prevent, nothing to avoid. Bad days were always a surprise.

 

Regular bad days were easy. Bouts of depression that rendered Kavinsky bed bound for days or nights where controlled dreaming turned into reliving his own trauma-laced memories or simply just shitty days in general. There was nothing complicated in that. Prokopenko knew what to do then. Give K his space, only making sure to keep him drinking something other than alcohol and eating something other than dreamed up hunger soothing pills.

 

 _Bad_ days were tricky. Everytime was different, but nothing Prokopenko generally didn't know how to handle.

There was nothing really, that had Prokopenko completely at loss. They have been friends for years and Prokopenko learned how to handle his friend. His brother. Because that was what they were. Brothers.

 

 

 

At the beginning, nothing foretold this day to be _bad_. They went about their morning as usual. Prokopenko hauling himself from the bed to the couch and Kavinsky locking himself in one of the cellar rooms. After dozing for a couple hours more, Prokopenko popped his head into the room to check on K and after forcing his friend to eat, he left back upstairs.

 

He noticed Kavinsky being more tired, more angry this evening, but he said nothing.

 

He woke up in the middle of the night on high alert, but clueless as of why. Something just didn't feel right. He forced the uneasy feeling to the back of his head, and after putting on a shirt he waddled to the kitchen. At first he didn't notice anything.

 

Their house was not the cleanest in general, but it wasn't filthy. Just as messy as two teenagers without any adult supervision can get. But after standing in the bright light of the fridge for a while, he noticed sticky stains on the countertop. Swallowing the dread in his throat he turned on the light.

 

He choked on air when the stains turned red in the bright light. The entire kitchen was a mess of bloody prints and alcohol spills, and while vodka puddles did not alarm him at all, he felt chills creeping down his spine at the sight of the bloody floor. The amout of blood wasn't enough to indicate any serious wounds and Prokopenko bitterly reflected on how he became a proffesional at those kinds of calcucations.

 

Forcing himself to leave their bloodied kitchen behind, he went for the cellar rooms.

 

Stony steps felt cold under his bare feet and he cursed himself for not wearing any pants, but didn't dwell on that for too long. His heart hammered in his chest. He should've known it was a _bad_ day.

 

Cursing under his breath he looked for the tiny stripes of light under the doors. He didn't have to. The room that Kavinsky occupied was wide open, spilling a stain of light at the opposite wall.

He didn't even walk into the room, when he smelled bile, and his stomach dropped.

 

He hesitantly inched into the room, squiting at the light.

 

“K?”, he whispered, hoping that his friend was concious enough to respond.

 

Kavinsy let out a raspy chuckle, but didn't say anything.

 

Prokopenko's knees buckled under him when he saw Kavinsky.

 

He was laying down on his side, in a pool of bile with blood trickling from his nose into his mouth and pooling around his bloodied hands. Around him was scattered shattered glass, pill bottles and dream things. He was looking blankly at the wall ahead, breathing wetly through his mouth.

 

“Oh my god, K”, Proko whispered, kneeling down next to his friend, threading his fingers through Kavinsky's hair. He didn't move him. “What did you do?”.

 

Kavinsky heaved a breath, his ashen skin stretching around his ribs. Prokopenko's heart was breaking for his friend.

 

“It's just a bad night”, K rasped, “just a bad one”.

 

“What happened there?”, Prokopenko tapped Kavinsky's temple gently, “what's in there?”.

 

“Too much”, K's breath stuttered, “there's too much in there, Proko, I don't know where to put it”.

 

“Tell me”.

 

“He's always right there”, Prokopenko swallowed down the wave of agony he felt for his friend, “right there”. Kavinsky tapped his forehead. “He's always so loud. He's always yelling”.

 

“We're the only ones here”, Prokopenko whispered, “just you and me. He has no way to be here”.

 

“Sometimes it's not enough”, Kavinsky murmured bitterly, “sometimes it gets so crowded there. So crowded. I need to pull it all out. Not always from there”.

 

Prokopenko wasn't sure Kavinsky even knew what he was talking about. He didn't stop him from talking anyway. There was nothing he could do, other than just sit there. He gently nudged K to face him and squrming around to sit cross legged, hissing and the way his bare thighs stuck to the cold floor, he put K's hand in his lap, playing with his fingers. He wasn't prepared to see tears dripping down the slope of his friend's nose, quiet in their journey.

 

Kavinsky sniffled, once or twice, but it only forced more blood from his nose.

 

“Let's get you to the bathtub, okay?”, Prokopenko smiled stiffly, “we can talk more later”.

 

He tugged Kavinsky up, pinching his nose with one hand and wrapping the other one around his waist.

 

Tugging Kavinsky upstairs while pantless, was one of the hardest things Prokopenko has ever done. But driven by Kavinsky's choked breathing, he managed.

 

He waited for the tub to fill and commanded Kavinsky to hold his nose while he ran to his room and tugged on the first pair of pants he saw. When he came back, K was still in the same spot, not a hair out of place. He hauled him into the tub and sat on the floor next to it, smushing his cheek on the edge. He closed his eyes for a moment and startled, feeling a wet trail on his cheek. He opened his eyes to see Kavinsky looking at him with glazed eyes.

 

“What's going through you head right now?”, Kavinsky asked.

 

“How I felt something was off about you this evening. How I'll need to clean that room downstairs”, Prokopenko sighed heavily, “how I want to know what's going through your head right now”. He smiled tiredly.

 

Kavinsky didn't say anything, instead locking his gaze on swirls of blood seeping thinly from cuts on his hands.

 

“Why did it turn bad?”, Prokopenko sighed, “it didn't start bad, right?”

 

“It was okay in the morning”, K admitted, “and then it got loud there”, he tapped his temple, “and I got mad. Couldn't dream anything. Drank too much, took too much.”.

 

Prokopenko nodded. “You're not going to sleep, are you?”, he rubbed his eyes.

 

“Not really. I can watch tv or something, you can go back to sleep”.

 

“Like hell I will”, Proko snorted.

 

 

 

 

They end up in Proko's bed, tangled under the covers with music trickling quietly from the speaker. Prokopenko was slipping in and out of conciousness with his hand tangled in Kavinsky's hair. He stretched, arching from the marttress, smiling at the way Kavinsky slid his hand under his shirt, tracing his collarbones, as he rolled to his side. He buried his hand back into K's hair, tugging ligthly, content with the way his friend relaxed into him.

 

“Next time it gets too loud, let me know”, Prokopenko murmurs with lips pressed to Kavinsky's temple, “before you start pulling things out”.

 

“It's always loud”, K dismissed quietly, but without conviction. He is dulled now. Drained.

 

“Not an excuse”, Prokopenko replies, equally hushed, “just tell me.”

 

“Okay”, K agrees and Prokopenko knows he's lying. He doesn't have the energy to call him out on it.

 

They doze off when the night skies start to grey with dawn, pressed close together.

 


End file.
